This invention relates to a device for trapping rodents, e.g., mice. Mouse traps have existed for many years and have been used in an attempt to eliminate mice from residential and commercial properties. For as long as mouse traps have existed, people have recognized deficiencies in mouse traps, and have strived to create a better mouse trap.
When more than one mouse is suspected in a particular area, a person has the choice of using many individual mouse traps or a multi-catch mouse trap. Neither of these options may be desirable with existing mouse traps because the traps are typically set in difficult to access locations. A mouse trap must be carefully set and laid out for trapping the mouse. It must then be periodically inspected for trapped mice to avoid the odor of decomposition. This setting and inspection process may be time consuming for a plurality of individual traps because each is usually carefully set and positioned in usually tight and/or irregular spaces frequented by mice. Multi-catch traps may be undesirable or useless because they may be too large to fit into locations that are frequented by mice. Moreover, emptying multi-catch traps may be difficult and undesirable because of their size and the required effort to frequently empty them to avoid the accumulation of odor. A solution that permits mouse traps to be easily configured, positioned, set, and removed in difficult to access locations was thus needed.
Most rodent traps that do not crush the rodent are designed to work in one of three different manners: to entrap the rodent and suffocate it, to entrap the rodent where it is left to die by starvation, or to entrap the rodent temporarily where it can safely be released at another and less undesirable location. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,975,857; 4,557,066; 4,232,472; and 5,005,312 disclose traps having a movable member that forms an air tight seal around an opening into an enclosure for suffocating an entrapped rodent by hypercapnia--a process whereby the available oxygen in the enclosure is replaced by the rodent's own carbon dioxide. However, this trap only functions in a suffocating mode and cannot effectively be operated to catch a rodent to be released at another location. Traps of this type will be undesirable to those users who feel that killing mice is inhumane, and prefer to release the entrapped rodent at another location.
Traps that are not air tight and do not have an effective way to release the entrapped rodent kill the entrapped rodent by starvation. This is also undesirable as an even higher percentage of the population feel that these types of traps are inhumane because starvation is too cruel, even for rodents.
Many mouse traps are designed to entrap a rodent so that the user can transport the trap with the rodent to a remote location and free the rodent. However, these traps only function for trapping and later releasing the rodents. Many users do not wish to release the rodent and would prefer to have the rodent die quickly before handling the trap. An even less desirable alternative to not releasing the rodent is to have it slowly starve to death. Additionally, many rodent traps of this design do not have a safe and simple way to release the entrapped rodent.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,327,673 discloses a trap with an enclosure having holes in one of its walls. A piece of tape is used to cover the holes to make the inside of the enclosure substantially air tight to suffocate a rodent. The piece of tape can be removed to permit the rodent to survive until it is released. However, while removing the piece of tape provides the user the option of using the trap as a rodent removal device as opposed to a rodent suffocating device, it suffers drawbacks. For example, if the piece of tape is removed and the trap is successfully used a first time, the trap may be difficult to reuse, especially as a rodent suffocating device, because the piece of tape will likely have been discarded or be otherwise unusable. Also, this rodent trap fails to provide a safe and effective way to release an entrapped rodent. Therefore, a reusable rodent trap that gives the user the option of releasing the rodent or letting it die via suffocation was thus needed.
Mouse traps can also be undesirable because they are expensive and/or difficult to manufacture and assemble. Many rodent traps have elements that are pivotally connected to each other for relative movement to entrap the rodent. As rodent traps as frequently made from plastic to reduce manufacturing costs, these pivotal connections are commonly created by utilizing small rods or cylindrical projections on one element that fit within small holes in the other element. One example of this is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,829,700. However, rodent trap designs using small rods or cylindrical projections and small holes tend to be undesirable as they can be expensive and difficult to manufacture and assemble. Additionally, these designs have an increased likelihood of breakage during the assembly process. Therefore, a rodent trap that was inexpensive and simple to manufacture and assemble was needed.